


Winter Fever

by bluebeholder



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Humansider, Light Angst, M/M, Post-Dishonored: Death of the Outsider, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-11 08:56:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20150986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebeholder/pseuds/bluebeholder
Summary: The ex-Outsider comes down with a nasty illness. Lucky for him, he has people (Corvo) to look after him.





	Winter Fever

He is, according to officially-planted rumor, an informant from Tyvia under the protection of the Throne. According to the official byline, he is a nobody, and not to be discussed. According to unofficial rumor, he is probably the Lord Protector’s kept man. According to another unofficial rumor, he’s the Lord Protector’s _son_.

The Outsider—the ex-Outsider, he supposes—finds all this hysterically funny.

Where once there would have been mild amusement, at best, there is now laughter. Returned to humanity, he feels joy as strongly as sorrow and anger, which is to say with an overpowering immediacy that overrides all thought. Every time a deeply exasperated Corvo reports yet another turn in the evolution of the myth growing around the Outsider, he can’t help breaking into peals of laughter.

“Four thousand years of things I couldn’t find funny,” he says, when Corvo demands to know why he cackles like a hyena on the Serkonan plains. “And besides, this is _hilarious_.”

What is not hilarious is the day that, in the middle of laughing over some pun in a book, he breaks down in a fit of coughing that leaves him gasping, breathless, and more than a little afraid.

Fear is like joy, another thing that overwhelms. When he has recovered from coughing he finds himself curled in a corner of his small room. He presses his hands to his chest, tries to steady his ragged breathing, his pounding heart.

It’s just a cough. A human thing to do, a response perhaps to too loud a laugh, or to dust in the air, or to a cold day. And yet he can’t shake the thoughts of the wet coughs of people infected with one of the hundreds of plagues he’s seen in his long long life. The fear will not leave.

So when the day is over, he slips—as he almost always does—through the halls of Dunwall Tower to reach Corvo’s room.

“Come in,” Corvo says, when he knocks, and the door opens with only the softest creak. Corvo looks up from where he sits at his desk, hard features softened by the warm golden glow of his lamp. It’s the only light in the room.

“My dear Corvo,” he says. He lets the door fall shut behind him, crosses the room as soundlessly as he’d ever walked in the Void. There is still, Emily has informed him more than once, something of the supernatural about him—and his silence is one of those things.

Corvo’s expression relaxes. “You _again_? I thought you’d grow bored of me,” he says, teasing softly. Really, the thought of Corvo teasing someone, breaking his years of solemnity, is a bit beyond belief. Yet here they are.

“Never,” he says, with a small smile.

He sits on the edge of Corvo’s desk, looking down at the Lord Protector. Corvo favors him with a smile, and a brief touch on his hand, before his focus returns to the papers on the desk. His spectacles glint a little in the dim lamplight. He looks handsome in them, distinguished and lordly.

“Something is bothering me, Corvo,” he says.

Corvo looks up at him again, this time properly taking his hand. “What is it?”

He bites the inside of his cheek for a moment before speaking. “I had a cough,” he says. “It was…it hurt. Like a plague cough.”

“What made you cough?” Corvo asks, apparently unrattled. The man never appears rattled, though, so it doesn’t signify.

“I was laughing,” he admits.

Corvo laces their fingers together. “That would be it, then,” he says. “Your hyena laughing…I’m not surprised.”

He smiles, a little reassured. The fear retreats, replaced by the overwhelming feeling for which he really has no name, a feeling he only gets around Corvo. “I won’t worry, then,” he says.

So he doesn’t worry. Not even when his chest starts to ache and when his cough begins to bring up phlegm. It must just be how deep his coughs are. He’s laughing too much, perhaps.

And then two days later the fever arrives.

He can’t get out of bed. He lies in bed and shakes, sweating, unable to get cool and yet so cold he can’t bear to take off his blankets. He’s too tired to even call for help, spending the day dozing in and out in bed.

This means no one has any idea what’s happened to him until Corvo finally comes looking for him in the evening.

He is aware, vaguely, of Corvo’s hand on his cheek, of Corvo’s voice telling him to open his eyes, calling for help. “I’m all right,” he tries to say, but it doesn’t come out quite right.

“You’re sick,” Corvo says, “I’m sorry—I should have listened—”

There’s a panicked desperation in Corvo’s voice that makes him think that this sickness is more serious than that first cough would have led him to think. So he lies back and waits as a doctor is brought, and pills administered to bring down his fever, and a concoction tipped down his throat to help him sleep.

It’s very nice to sleep without coughing.

When he wakes up, his mind is much, much clearer. He still feels the fever chills racing up and down his skin, but it’s not as terrible as it was. His chest aches, but that is bearable.

Slowly, he takes in his surroundings without sitting up. He’s in his bed, in his room, under a blanket that no longer smells of sweat and sickness. It’s dark outside the window and only one light has been left burning. Corvo is sitting by his bedside, chin to his chest, apparently asleep. One of his hands is on the bed.

Carefully, he takes Corvo’s hand. He laces their fingers together, trying not to wake his erstwhile protector. But it’s a futile effort: Corvo is too light a sleeper.

“Hm?” Corvo blinks awake, looks down at him, and squeezes his hand. “You’re awake.”

“Always stating the obvious,” he says, and his lip cracks.

Corvo fumbles at his pocket for a moment before bringing out a slightly wrinkled, but clean, handkerchief. With a gentle touch Corvo dabs at his lip and he permits it, even leaning into the touch a little. As usual, they don’t _speak _of what’s between them, though it grows day by day, and rare expressions of affection like this grow more and more common.

“Thank you,” he says, a little hoarsely, as Corvo passes him a cup of apparently medicinal tea. The stuff tastes foul, but it could be worse. He drinks it and tries not to make too many faces.

“You gave us a fright,” Corvo says. He joins their hands again, without speaking of it.

He smiles at Corvo over the rim of the teacup. “What plague did I come down with?”

“It’s no laughing matter,” Corvo says, a bit terse. “You have the Winter Fever. It’s lucky you’re young and healthy…and in care of a good doctor.”

“Ah,” he says, for lack of anything better to say. He would very much like to say the words ‘I told you so,’ but that would be counterproductive. And it might lead to Corvo leaving.

Corvo squeezes his hand again. The strength in his grip is rather overwhelming, but it is so comforting. “The doctor will administer antiserum tomorrow morning,” he says. “It’s just an injection, nothing serious.”

“My first injection. Wonderful.”

“I’ll stay with you,” Corvo offers.

He’s about to turn the offer down, but, on second thought, it would be nice to have company for such a novel and painful experience. “I would appreciate it,” he says. He looks up at Corvo, catching the man’s dark eyes. “You’re brooding. Like a mother hen with an ill chick.”

“Can you blame me?” Corvo asks. “It frightened me, when I found you. You were so still. And the coughing, it was like hearing the Rat Plague all over again…”

“I’m alive, Corvo.”

“And I am thankful for that,” Corvo says. Corvo lifts their joined hands and, gently, kisses the back of his hand. He trembles a little, and more at Corvo’s next words: “I’ve been advised that any closer contact with you would likely get me sick as well.”

He smiles again, brighter, fuller. “We can’t have that. But when I’m well again…”

“…we’ll see,” Corvo says, returning the smile.

With care that he doesn’t topple out of bed, he shifts sideways to lean against Corvo, shoulder braced against Corvo’s side. It’s comfortable like that. Far, far less lonely.

**Author's Note:**

> “Winter Fever” is another name for pneumonia. During the late 1800s and early 1900s (a rough equivalent to Dishonored’s timeframe), before the introductions of antibiotics and modern vaccines, one of the treatments was antiserum therapy. Human or nonhuman blood serum containing antibodies for a disease is introduced to a patient in order to introduce such antibodies to a sick individual. It was originally used to treat diphtheria and tetanus, but also for pneumonia. 
> 
> Read about it here: https://www.historyofvaccines.org/index.php/content/articles/passive-immunization
> 
> Re: the lack of name for the ex-Outsider—I’ll just quote Neil Gaiman on cats here.   
_“Cats don't have names,” it said._  
“No?” said Coraline.  
“No,” said the cat. “Now you people have names. That's because you don't know who you are. We know who we are, so we don't need names.”


End file.
